


Pancakes, White Roses and The Cupboard Under the Stairs

by Shyam_Xt



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Cigarettes, Draco Malfoy in the Muggle World, Draco is a heavy smoker, Locked In, M/M, Mind Reading, Mischievous Draco Malfoy, Romance, Secret Crush, Slow Build, Smart Draco Malfoy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:35:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23478565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shyam_Xt/pseuds/Shyam_Xt
Summary: Dudley lives in No 5, Privet Drive now and suddenly the house tries to lock him. Harry volunteers to work on that and Kingsley sends Draco to help despite Harry's dislike.They get trapped in the house and spends 7 days.First Harry hates Draco's playful snobbish disposition but he gets used to it.Draco realizes that the magic is not a curse but Harry's old protective charm. He loves the charm and thinks it's like romantic and obsessive love.He tells this to the wrong person.Draco reads Harry's mind and learns of his past as well his  secret desires.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Kudos: 25





	Pancakes, White Roses and The Cupboard Under the Stairs

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this during the lockdown. Simply to bring back my feet on creative writing. Hope you like it.  
> This is based on Harry's mother's protective charm which is based on pure love. 
> 
> Love is, in a way, a certain lockdown too. When it becoms a little obsessive it acts like a prison. But it can be romantic though it's super crazy. 
> 
> I like smart Draco who is strong and skilled but vulnerable when it comes to emotions. Also I like the crazy, mischievous snobbish disposition of him. 
> 
> I didn't want to add unnecessary smut or fluff. It's pure romance and serious.

  
He spins his wand on Aunt Petunia's gleaming kitchen table staring at it with a duck face. Third spin ends pointing the wand tip at the refrigerator.He gives it a casual wave and the door opens revealing tinned muggle food, milk cartons and dairy products he knows nothing of. Then he points it at several things in the kitchen lifting them, replacing them and opening and closing drawers. 

Before playing with the refrigerator he placed six wine glasses on the pantry in a perfect line and poured red wine into each one of them with profound practice and artistry as a trained bartender. Then he made the bottle float towards Harry and knocked against his head rousing him from his work.

It's the fourth day passing mounting agitation and distress. Moreover, he appears terminally bored.

The first day was spent just as anticipated. He was aghast. In spite of detecting the curse said to have disturbed Dudley, he patrolled all over No4, Privet Drive, Surrey criticizing muggle living not alarmed the slightest by the fact that they also are trapped in.   
Then he pulled out many things out of his pockets such as clothes enchanted torches, sweets, shoes, socks, books and cigarettes as if he has come for a holiday.

Day 2 was threateningly silent for Harry. They worked every spell detecting the magic and the source of it. Kingsley and Arthur Weasley sent a patronus. Hermione sent an owl asking complicated questions and giving even intricate instructions which he read and gaped at Harry dumbfounded. Then he hogged the floo to talk to Lucius Malfoy for half an hour.

Day 3 was the beginning of frustration. Having scanned the whole house for a way out Harry realised that he was actually trapped in the very house full of grim memories with a man who is obnoxiously full of himself.

Day 4 has passed the break even point.   
He seems cracking under pressure.   
His neatly combed long hair got up on a messy bun. Started playing like a child and staring unnecessarily at Harry when he is not looking. Adding on to his usual irritating attitude he occasionally acted his homely pampered manner, demanding food, mostly complaining of hunger.   
'I don't know to operate those.' he points at the sophisticated cappuccino machine and the stove Dudley has brought recently.  
It's a howling mistake bringing Draco Malfoy instead of Bill Weasley to get locked up in Dudley Dursley's house. Despite Bill's helping hand Kingsley has pulled Draco out of his holiday in France to make things worse.  
Contrary to his signature smugness he keeps working without a break, and he refuses help whenever being offered saying it's all the calculation and logic he ought to work on to figure the magic out to which Harry can't help but beamed with genuine joy when the latter had placed an egg sandwich to accompany the mug of coffee infront of him.

Day 5-  
All communication methods including owl delivery, floo and patronus do not work. Fear striking and making it clear that they are stuck in the house with enough of food for another two week only thanks to Dudley's irritating habit of hoarding food. In his haste of evacuating the house, has left all.   
'That's interesting!' his glee is incomprehensible but what's more incomprehensible to Harry is Draco's attentiveness to learn the mechanism of the cappuccino machine. 

Later in the morning he knocked on the door of Dudley's room when Harry was getting dressed, entered before he had answered with two mugs of steaming coffee. Harry, who was half naked blatantly looked up for the unspeakable astonishment but in he cooly swaggered.

'You mind?' he mutters more to himself than to the intruder.

'I knocked!' he shrugs nonchalantly.

'Yes genius, you knocked.' he pulls up the trousers, buckles it ignoring the fact he watches.

Then he waits, all eyes on his bare body, well-formed abs and tight muscles on his chest, the result of serious auror training, clean dark hair wet from the recent shower lining down towards the crotch getting thicker.

Harry avoids his gaze and obtains the second coffee cup he holds, allows him to observe, with no complaint. 

'You slept well?' he asks smoothly sipping his coffee.

'No I didn't!' 

The reply comes out scathingly pushing his wet hair off his forehead, showing his naked firm biceps and taut forearms.  
Draco stops transfixed for an instant forgetting his coffee, stops breathing, drinking in the sight of the man not bothered to hide his rouse.   
'Why?' 

Then he wakes up, walks past him picking his shirt from the bed before he reaches it.

'No news from the ministry and no way out and you couldn't figure out the curse!'

'Actually I have!' he observes the shirt, leans against the wall and smells it inadvertently.

Harry freezes. A thick breathless strained silence. Seconds turn to minutes, coffee cup empty.

'I need a favour!' he gives the shirt back with a mild expression, shows no reluctancy watching him putting the shirt on, fabric touching his skin and then the fingers working on buttons. 'Can you call your elf?' 

'What?'

'Your Elf!'

'Can he?' 

'Well there's only one way to know!' 

Kreacher appears obeying Harry's call bowing low and addressing both of them.

Draco greets the elf. Gives three envelopes. 'One to Kingsley, one to Hermione Granger and one to my mother.'

'Wait why can't we go with him?' 

He gives an odd stare at the owner of the elf. 'Fine! You go! I have to stay anyway...!'

And ignores the dumbfounded look on Harry's face.

Kreacher disappears leaving the two men in the room in thick silence. Draco seems strangely satisfied but Harry fuming with anger. 

Day 6  
1 o'clock in the morning.

Harry stays awake for he did not or could not sleep. He is sitting on the floor of the living room watching the moonlight seeping in through the curtains apart when Draco walks in for a smoke. He sits by him pulling his knees towards his chest allowing moonlight on his creamy arms resting on the knees.  
'He's not coming!' 

He watches the third smoke ring ripples up, touches it with his forefinger and taps it. Watching the disturbed smoke ring making designs in the moonlit darkness he drags in the next intake and fills his lungs. His head tilts back in bliss rests against the wall tapping the cigarette with the tip of his finer shedding ash.

'Why can't he come back?' Harry's voice is calmer and smoother and inhales the direct result of his nasty habit patiently.

'Because the magic upgraded!' he lets the smoke leave his lungs enjoying the pleasure. 'There are loopholes in this magic which allowed communication and Elf apparation at first but it upgraded.' He tilts his head looking sideways at Harry.

'OK genius then why didn't we go in the first place?'

'Because I knew the magic wouldn't allow it. Besides, I told you to go!' he stares at him intently with a sparkling glee. 'Why didn't you?'

'Because we are in this together you moron! Kingsley would kill me if I went alone.'

'Oh!' he sighs looking up at the ceiling.

'Why even asked me to try if you knew?' Harry takes the cigarette from his fingers and drags in the smoke. His eyes closed and voice in a delicate whisper, smiles to the soft chuckle of the man next to him.

8 o'clock in the morning-

He is observing a drawing while sipping his coffee at the kitchen table when Harry walks in. A plate of pancakes steaming on the table despite his inability to perform the art of muggle cooking.

'You don't know muggle cooking!'

'I read!' he points at a cookbook.

'What's the drawing?' Harry sits next to him peeping into the drawing. The writings and symbols, unable to be comprehended but not interested also, yet very eager to see his side profile right next to him, waxy and radiant after his morning shower. Wet hair tied up lose, water dripping on his shirt, glued to his pale skin underneath.  
After perceiving him adequately he points at the notebook with handwritten spells and drawings. 'Yours?'

He nods watching Harry taking the pancakes, spreading butter and syrup and cutting a piece. Then he grabs his hand and eats without a warning.  
'Really Malfoy?'  
'The cookbook doesn't say how to eat it.'   
He swallows, considers and approves and sighs gravely.   
'We can escape this. But you have to trust me.'

10 o'clock-

Harry has been thinking for an hour sitting on Dudley's brand-new sofa smoking one of Draco's remaining three cigarettes. He has retired to study his notes in the dining table while Harry dwells on his childhood memories, deep dark miseries, painful moments, love and loss and cupboard under the stairs.

'Why is it necessary?' Harry's voice sounds uneasy enough to stir the calm, and he doesn't want to hide the reproach.

Draco on the contrary doesn't break his calm. Doesn't look up from his reading. 'I need to study your relationship with this magic Potter. It's the only way.'  
He takes three more intakes of smoke watches how the smoke swirls around his head like sinful haloes and drifts into thin air as nothing happened.

'This is not a curse. It's the protective charm you had around this house when you were small' He leaves the book lay open, walks towards where Harry is seated. 'It got tampered I think.' He leans against a massive glass cabinet eyeing him mildly. Enjoys his frustrated stance, the smoke coming out of his mouth and nose, eyes closed head turned up. 'It's smart magic Potter. It upgrades and thinks it's guarding you though it is actually imprisoning you.'

'Why did it try to lock Dudley?' 

'Because he has your mother's blood!'

'Oh yeah?' he grunts.

Draco's face lightens up with a strange smile. He walks towards the sofa and drops himself next to Harry. 'It's like obsessive love.' He toes off his shoes and pulls a barefoot up the sofa towards him resting his head on the back rest and smiles to the gaudy chandelier Dudely has replaced which was very Aunt Petunish. 'You know Potter?'

'What?' he breathes in the last of the cigarette.

'If this magic was a person I would hold on to it, gladly be a prisoner.' 

Harry gapes sideways at him in total bewilderment, the way he indulges in his dream, eyes closed, neck arched, smiling to his own thoughts.

Late in that night he walks in to the room without knocking. Now Harry, undisturbed by his every ill-manner remains sitting on the edge of the bed having agreed to open up his mind in depth, every memory, every sorrow, torture, hunger, worn out clothes and the cupboard under the stairs.

He kneels between his legs, his cottony touch cupping his face and rests his forehead against his not meeting the eyes. 

'Scared Malfoy?'

'What am I going to see?' he mumbles running his pale hands up and down the sides of his face.

Harry tucks the few strands of silver blond behind his ears and lifts his face by the chin meeting his anguish gaze. 'Well there's one way to find out.'  
It was entirely different from Severus Snape's occlumency lesson.

Just as his velvet touch on his skin a patch of sheer delicacy started wandering in his mind touching and caressing memory after memory embracing some, consoling some and adoring some until he found his world of cupboard under the stairs.  
A few minutes later he stopped resting his head on his shoulder grabbing on to his shirt and breathing hard.   
Harry smiles.  
'You OK princess? Tell me which one shook you the most?'

Day 7 -

He appears dark and grim quite suddenly collecting his stuff and throwing them in a paper bag. Then he lights the last cigarette and meditates becoming paler and sadder moment after moment checking the time.   
'Ministry is waiting outside. The magic will try to keep you so it will hurt you a little. I might have to distract you. So please go with the flow. I'm gonna blast all the windows and doors so put your glasses in your pocket!'   
He gestured Harry to stand near the window facing him.   
His wand ready and fingers shaking. He cast the two spells, the latter, the Reductor curse smashing everything, pieces of glass scattering around them shooting in every direction as shining diamonds in the rising dawn outside while many things in the room fall and fly. He stuffs his wand in his pocket and wraps his hands around Harry avoiding his gaze.

Magic wakes up, screams in agony the force trying to part them. He gasps in pain wraps his legs around Harry holding on, clinging, against the force, shaking violently.   
Eventually his spell overpowers the magic of the house dragging them out of the broken window, which, the precise moment he seizes, capturing his naked glassy green gaze.  
...........

You OK Harry?'   
World around him is unusually quiet except for her voice and heavy breathing of another. Other than a mild headache Harry feels quite well. He wakes up fully. The silence and the mild blue light and the smell of the antiseptic cleaners divulge that he is in the hospital. Hermione is beaming but Dudley has the most screwed and regretful expression Harry has ever seen. 

Then he gains his memory. Looking into his grey eyes. A comfortable overrated silence. An unknown scene of him and him in an embrace, not a memory not a dream, a deep secret cherished for ages in the pit of the mind playing live. A wedding ring, White roses and a kiss he never had, flashing; and he is wandering in his mind picking the clandestine cuffed desires in that borrowed crucial moment.  
Then he remembers the reality. His silver eyes staring wide and spellbound, glossy and mellow in sheer delight against the glass edges cutting and scraping. Draco beamed. Ran his long fingers through his black hair, fingertips brushing the scalp. Without white roses his mouth indulged in Harry's, touched, opened, wet, warm, mellow, and tarts and cigarettes. It was soft and smooth. Quiet and tranquil except for the delicate beat of a heart. Tastier than treacle tart and fresher than the summer air. 

That was all.

'What happened Hermione?' he sits on the bed nodding at Dudely.  
Malfoy's charm dragged you two out of the window. Then you remained in the air for a minute or so fighting against the magic and then fell off.'   
'Sorry about the house Dudely I'll fix it when he's done with the magic.'

He gasps in terror. 'It's alright. I don't want the house. Your boyfriend can have it to work on the curse.'

He's not my boyfriend Dudley and it's not a curse. Where is Malfoy?'

Dudley glares at him in disbelief and then turns to Hermione for support or assurance to which Hermione returns a warning look. Harry sits wearing his glasses and looking for his wand and his clothes despite Hermione's plea to stay making Dudley more confused.

'Where is he Hermione?' 

He demands now anxiety surging and swirling.

Two hours later despite the disapproval of the St Mungos healers, he walks out of the hospital looking for Draco Malfoy. He lays unconscious in his room of Malfoy Manor. His face content but body covered in an ample amount of cuts and scrapes, yet healing, probably for whatever Narcissa Malfoy has given him.  
However it takes nearly three days for him to fully recover and visits Harry at No 12, Grimmauld place, London to obtain Dudley's letter of approval to study the No5, Privet Drive, Surrey.   
Despite a mild scar on the forehead he appears quite well and radiant after staying at home a mother's boy. He acts his usual Malfoyish snobbish manner eager for the document refusing any refreshment stating his eagerness to leave.

'Where's your elf?'   
But he doesn't leave, looks all around including the ceiling and tapestries and gaudy curtains Kreacher would not let Harry change.

'I don't know. He goes here and there!' Facing him directly Harry leans against an armchair with his arms crossed eyeing his recovered details along with his usual details; which are, neat clothing, the black blazer with a mat sheen over the vicuna pullover and black shoes shining. Hair silky silver blond, combed and tied to a very neat pony tail. 

'OK. Um...,' he hesitates not ready to leave. 'Thank your cousin for this OK?' he looks at every single corner and trinket but not at the glaring gaze behind the glasses.  
'Hermione said you bore the impact of the fall resulting two broken ribs and several cuts from the glass so that I got the minimum damage.'

'She said that?' he looks at his feet going very red.

'Dudley thinks you are my boyfriend.'

'He had the audacity to think that!'

'You told me the magic would hurt me but it hurt you severely! You lied!'

'How obnoxious of me!'

'Why?'

'Gee I don't know!' he shrugs looking away, his eyes shutting tight, suppressing something inside of him and swallowing.

'You got into my mind again!' Harry steps forward, stands right in front of him searching for his gaze.

His face moves. Facial muscles relaxes. Then he sighs with a sweet smile. 'It's adorable the secret you cherish.' His hand moves to his heart smiles looking sideways at something. 'I'm honoured!' he talks to himself rather than to anyone else around and locks himself in a dream. 

'OK!' Harry pulls out his wand and without a warning locks the doors and casts a sealing charm around them.   
Draco looks at his blazing stony face confused to the utmost, lips apart in astonishment drops the roll of parchment with a soft thud on the carpet. He gasps as Harry steps closer and closer, shuts his eyes as his steel hands cups his face.   
'That door doesn't open. No one comes in and no one goes out. Since you love that kid of magic.' 

He nods gasping wrapping his cold shivering fingers around his iron wrists his eyes still closed breathing him in.

'Kreacher can't take you out.' he whispers threateningly palming his creamy vanilla cheeks titling his face to look at him. 'Do you understand?' 

He nods again and removes Harry's glasses and sees through his gaze.

'Kreacher will be very happy to show you around the house and you can sleep in any room you want and...,' he pauses pulling him closer. 'My room is up there OK?'

He nods obeying stepping completely in to his arms.

It's when the Time seizes in non existing space in the sealed house hidden from the whole world and Harry has nothing more to say. He unties his neat pony tail running his fingers in the silk and with or without white roses he knows no magic is might but this very moment is, and it is working loud and flawless; his cottony thoughts morph in and out of his mind giving wows and promises to stay imprisoned and locked up, cuffed, in his world.  
Even if it's,  
The cupboard under the stairs....

**Author's Note:**

> I used the title 'Pancakes, white roses and The cupboard Under the stairs' to represent reality, innocent desires and the sad past.


End file.
